hms iron duke

Thursday, 27 August 2015

“Predictability:
Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

Edward
Lorenz

Alphen, Netherlands. 27
August. The stock market crashes in China. Saudi crude drops to $50 per barrel.
A migrant dies aboard an over-crowded wreck lost in the middle of the
Mediterranean Sea. A young girl in East London logs onto an Islamist web-site
run by a British jihadi out of Raqqa in northern Syria. A Californian student joins
an online petition to protest against global warming. A Moroccan Islamist
attacks Europeans on a train between Amsterdam and Paris. Three Russian Tu-160M
bombers fly down the coast of northern Norway deliberately violating Norwegian
airspace. Welcome to the world of catastrophic interdependence and bad
globalisation and the policy and strategy vacuum that is today’s West. What if
anything can the ‘West’ do?

Catastrophic
interdependence goes something like this. Since the 2008 financial crash China
has been the saviour of the world economy enabling much of the anaemic economic
growth that helped prevent global economic meltdown. However, China is about to pay the price for
not building a sustainable economy as China’s debt-fuelled economy crashes,
depriving the world of economic drive. The
Chinese Communist Party faced with the prospect of an ouster resorts to armed nationalism
to shore up its power base as the contradiction of free market capitalism
competing with a command economy breaks the Chinese state.

The US economy is too
debt-ridden and American economic growth too fragile to replace China as the
driver of global growth. The Eurozone again faces economic collapse as the exports
of its beating heart – Germany – falter and then collapse. Unemployment in
Europe again soars opening the door to political populists and extremists
offering simple, and to some people romantic solutions to incredibly complex
problems.

In the developing world
the consequences are more profound. Many
countries across the world are one-shot economies that rely heavily on the
export of commodities such as oil, wood and precious metals to meet the basic
needs of their growing populations. In the absence of Chinese demand commodity
prices collapse placing Nigeria. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States under extreme
duress. No longer can Riyadh buy off
Islamists as Saudi Arabia joins the now long list of failing states across the
region. Iran is strengthened but so too
is ISIS as the prospect of a Caliphate offered the false hope of ‘stability’.

A final reckoning between
Shia and Sunni extremists explodes, leading to a general Middle Eastern war
that also threatens to engulf Israel. The migration flows into Europe in 2015 that
caused such concern suddenly seem like a trickle as many millions head north
and west seeking safety and security in Germany, the Netherlands and the
Scandinavian countries. Free movement across Europe is suspended but it is too
late as EU member-states simply force the migrants to keep on moving north and
west.

Terrorist attacks break
out across the European Continent as networks of Islamist radicals become
established feeding on disillusioned youth. Growing immigrant populations begin to exert and
impose identity politics paralysing the political action of Western European
states that whilst powerful on paper have become virtually ungovernable as ‘communities’
retreat into mutually-loathing ghettos and European cities begin to look more
like broken parts of Africa and the Middle East than Europe.

And then there is
Russia. The Putin regime facing the
collapse of the Russian economy that threatens the survival of the regime
seizes the opportunity of Europe’s distraction to divert attention by
completing the occupation of much of Ukraine. Moscow also seizes the Baltic
States. Faced with challenges on many fronts NATO, the EU and its member-states
issue a welter of condemnation…but do nothing.
However, even in the hour of Putin’s ‘triumph’ Russia itself begins to
collapse as beyond the Ural Mountains Moscow’s writ fails. Much of Russia becomes
yet another ungoverned space decisively reinforcing the power and wealth of the
Russian mafia and the global criminal network of which it is a part. The trafficking of drugs, arms and people
accelerates unchallenged.

The blame game begins. The
West must bear its responsibility for catastrophic interdependence and bad
globalisation. The West has gone strategically-AWOL these seven years past. With
the failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Powerful Western leaders have retreated
into sound-bite, gesture, and gimmick politics. Instead of confronting dangers
European leaders have wasted political capital and energy on a fantasy ‘union’
that will never work and which actually prevents power, influence and action
rather than aggregates it. In the margins even the President of mighty America
sounds ever more like a junior policy-wonk in a think-tank offering pious hope rather
than decisive action.

So, what to do? Even if I am deliberately painting a very dark
picture all of the threats I outline above are plausible and interaction between
them probable. Therefore, it is time for Western governments to return to the
first principles of power, policy and strategy-making and turn analysis into
action. Critically, it means the ‘West’ together reinvesting in the tools of
influence and effect – diplomacy, intelligence and armed forces. It also means
the creation of policy, strategy and structure than can effectively prevent and
manage the consequences of catastrophic interdependence and bad globalisation.
Above all, it demands of our leaders the political courage to see my big, dark
picture – my Edvard Monck of a strategic picture – tell people the hard truth,
and then act.

It will be tough. Bad
globalisation is a world defined by a growing battle between interconnectedness
and interaction, between power and ideology, between hatred and hope, between
values and consequences, between extreme faith and no faith, and between old
structure and new anarchy in which state power however powerful simply does not
have the same currency or value as it had in the past. However, the alternative would be
disastrous. A continued penchant for
political bullshit (sorry!) by leaders would be unforgivable for it would mean
ceding the realm of dangerous change that is the world today to the forces of
evil, to effectively leave the world at the mercy of predators and predation
simply because leaders are no longer capable of effective policy-making or the
crafting or sound strategy.

A senior Canadian friend
of mine said to me this week how nothing is possible anymore, until suddenly it
is possible. He is right. It is time for our leaders to get a grip. It is time
for Europeans, North Americans and their fellow-travellers in Asia-Pacific such
as Australia, India and Japan to begin properly preparing for and thus
preventing the picture I paint. It is time for our leaders to cast aside the
old, tired mantra that public opinion would not understand. It is time for them to stand up and lead. It
is time for a new West that is more idea than place to confront the forces of
catastrophic interdependence and bad globalisation.

If not bad globalisation
and catastrophic interdependence mixed with political vacillation, weakness and
incompetence will surely permit all these separate evils to merge into one -
the worst of all worlds. A world that is ever more prone to shock, but ever
less capable of coping with shock. Yes, the world is complex; but managing
complexity is precisely what government is meant to be for. Yes, effective policy
means tough decisions; but that is why we pay our leaders and why they enjoy
the fruits and the perks of taxpayer-funded power.

Pericles, the great leader
of Ancient Greece and defender of the Greek demos once said; “freedom is the
sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it”. It is time to get real before it is too late.
Big West, little West or no West – it is up to our leaders.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.